How do you use / integrate org-roam in different setups

[leoc]

Hey there! I am new to the whole Zettelkasten/Roamresearch game, but I think I fell in love with the concept already! Thank you, for putting this thing out so I got wind of it!

Maybe you already have another channel for these discussions, but I would love to know how other people are integrating their existing notes, todos, project files etc with org-roam or similar. ❤️

I am currently reading the book from Sönke Ahrens and would love to incorporate org-roam into my workflow, but feel the need for some inspiration. 😅

[jethrokuan]

Maybe you already have another channel for these discussions, but I would love to know how other people are integrating their existing notes, todos, project files etc with org-roam or similar.

I don't yet, but if there's enough interest, I can start one.

[leoc]

Alright, so we can keep it here? :-)
I currently have a few giant "environment"-related (e.g. project, business, customer) org-files. I capture a lot of stuff into them. As far as I understand I would have to diverge from this paradigm and put everything into smaller files, so I can reference them? How do you manage your TODOs and do you integrate them into org-roam?

[jethrokuan]

put everything into smaller files, so I can reference them?

The basic idea is to split out your notes into standalone chunks, and tag them such that they surface when you want them to.

How do you manage your TODOs and do you integrate them into org-roam?

My TODOs are currently separate from my org-roam. I'm using just a few files, with org-agenda. (More here https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/org_mode_workflow_preview/). Org-agenda slows down massively with a large number of files.

[l3kn]

Making the org-agenda work with tasks / dates spread over a large number of files (> 1000) is tricky.

The main problem is that it uses markers for the locations of headlines,
these can't be persisted to disk and can't be created when parsing files in temp buffers
(which is faster than using the "real" files to do so).

A workaround (assuming only a small subset of files contains tasks / dates) is to set the org-agenda-files to a list of these files (e.g. using another cache or grep) before each call to org-agenda.

I think what I'll do for https://github.com/l3kn/org-zettelkasten (not working at the moment) is to make sure each task has an ID property and write wrappers for each org-agenda command that uses those instead of markers.

[jethrokuan]

I think what I'll do for https://github.com/l3kn/org-zettelkasten (not working at the moment) is to make sure each task has an ID property and write wrappers for each org-agenda command that uses those instead of markers.

oof, sounds rough.

A workaround (assuming only a small subset of files contains tasks / dates) is to set the org-agenda-files to a list of these files (e.g. using another cache or grep) before each call to org-agenda.

Yeah, I never noticed this, but I can always loop through files listed by the variable org-agenda-files for building the cache, in addition to what's in org-roam-directory. I don't think I'll ever find that useful though.

[CHaskell2]

Heya; I think this is the best place at the moment to ask a question like this, apologies if not.

I just started using org-roam and am looking into how to integrate it with pinboard for my daily capture/consume of bookmarks. I've got the trivial bit (use org-roam-today to create file, pull down bookmarks, append them as a plain text block to the note) working but I'm seeking some advice on a more complicated part.

So, pinboard has the concept of tagging your bookmarks; using that, this is what I'd ideally like to happen:

1. Add a link to pinboard with a tag
2. Bookmark is added to daily notes file
3. Bookmark references any topic files that match a tag from the bookmark
4. Topic files gain a link to the daily note

I'd set the processing of 2-4 on a daily cron, and I believe 4 would happen automatically if I do 3. right? For 3, I'd ideally avoid re-inventing org-roam-insert, but it also seems like the logic is straightforward (search for matching suffix "_topic.org", create org link to it, otherwise create file with timestamp and topic and link to that). Are there any beartraps I'd fall into if I reinvent the behavior of org-roam-insert in a separate process?

[nalhasan]

I, too, split org-agenda from org-roam because I don't want my writing to interfere with my planning/task management.

I suggest exploiting org-capture and refile tasks accordingly. You can have a header in one of your agenda files as "writing," "editing," or "revising" that links to the org-roam note you're currently in.

[alphapapa]

@CHaskell2 FYI you may find this useful for some of that: https://github.com/alphapapa/org-web-tools

[jethrokuan]

@CHaskell2 I don't really understand the workflow you're describing. I suppose you want to give your topic file tags a diiferent file name suffix?

[jethrokuan]

moving this kind of discussion to slack.

[aldanor]

A bit later to the party, but: https://d12frosted.io/posts/2021-01-16-task-management-with-roam-vol5.html

Basically, marking roam files with 'Project' tag, and then updating org-agenda-files to only look at those files, automatically. Isn't that cool? (any catches?..)